Is an inventor still a valid occupation today?

He really did.

Yeah, but if you're based you make it open source and get donations or monetize making kits or something.

A guy at my work patented something I invented

>Is an inventor still a valid occupation today?

It takes years and costs tens of thousands to patent something that will just be stolen and mass produced by china anyways.

So in most cases. No.

I invent concepts and designs all the time, in a comfy nerdy niche. It's math/computers but I am happy

it's valid if it makes you money
if it does, you're a genius inventor
if it doesn't, you're just a delusional crackpot

Writing code

Ducktales was a comic?

but oracle is right
it's all been done and there's no new frontier left

This, plus whatever you do, it's probably illegal already.

Red tape has destroyed the casual would be inventor

Patent attorney here. Absolutely yes. Plenty of people have started successful businesses around an innovative new product.

Nonsense. Look at Lonnie Johnson, who invented the SuperSoaker. Look at the guy who invented "spinners" for cars. Look at the guy who invented "Bounce" fabric softener sheets. All of them had simple ideas that they patented and popularized.

The "Bounce" guy sold his two patents to Procter & Gamble and made about a million a year in royalties by the end of the patent lifespan. The spinning-rims guy tried to make a go of it on his own, eventually got contacted by a major auto parts manufacturer that liked it, and sold out to them for several million. The SuperSoaker guy went into manufacturing for himself and made multiple millions.

I really hate that show. Most of the "inventors" are just making some new detergent and then trying to market it as GREEEEEEEEN!!!, or a smoothie mix that they market as HEALTHY!!!!! or similar marketing stupidity. Then again, I don't watch it regularly so maybe there are a few who aren't just trying to build hype around a new processed snack or some such shit.

It truly is a golden age right now, OP. You have almost all of the technical knowledge of the world available to you, free, online. Prototyping equipment like 3D printers can be had for a few hundred dollars. If you need circuit boards, you can contact a service in China and they'll make a hundred of them for you for a couple of bucks each.

>kickstarters
Those are mostly only good for marketing, although they do help to gauge interest. A company I worked for for a while got started through it, and they were in early enough that it worked out well for them. I also watched several competitors try to start up later, who failed miserably.

Long since superseded by patent trolling.

Unless your invention can be quantized and applied via docker no

Yeah but I do it as a service and call myself a "technical consultant".